BRIEFING BOOK

BRIEFING BOOK

Jan 20, 2000

Smooth out Win 2000. Col. Stephen Broug-hall, program manager for the Army Global Combat Support System at Fort Lee, Va., said he is concerned about moving to Microsoft Windows 2000, which is scheduled for a Feb. 17 release.

GCSS officials two years ago adopted Windows NT 4.0 and an Oracle Corp. relational database management system as standards for their system, which is replacing 13 legacy systems for retail logistics and will run on more than 40,000 workstations.

Less than four months ago, Army officials gave contractor GRC International Inc. of Vienna, Va., the go-ahead to deploy Win 2000 and bypass NT 4.0.

Calls for help. Year 2000-related incidents affected Air Force communications, health, logistics and weapons systems, according to help desk calls logged as of Jan. 4, said Col. Robert Glitz, co-director of the Standard Systems Group's Fusion Center at the Gunter Annex of Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

'There were lots of little things,' Glitz said. There had been 200 help desk tickets reported, with 129 still open. Over half of the help desk calls were year 2000-related, he said.

On Jan. 3, 900 calls came in to SSG's Field Assistance Branch, which shares a location with the Fusion Center. It was one of the help desk's busiest days ever, Glitz said.

Not forgotten. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre recently praised the performance of retired Army Brig. Gen. Roger W. Scearce, who was deputy director of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service from early 1998 until this past summer.

DFAS plans to reduce its systems from more than 300 to 32 by 2002. Meanwhile, DFAS officials are implementing paperless contracting, said Scearce, now vice president of American Management Systems Inc. of Fairfax, Va.

Following protocols. Microsoft Corp. officials are waiting for Lockheed Martin Corp. officials to test a native Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Internet Messaging Access Protocol 4.0 client developed by Nexor Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md. The product can run Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and Exchange Defense Message System for SunSoft Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, said Timothy Dioquino, Microsoft DMS program manager.

The initial demand has come from intelligence agencies, but 'we think it will have applicability anywhere where there are large numbers of Unix users,' such as the Army Battle Command System, which uses Lotus DMS for Solaris, said Ed Harrington, vice president of business development at Nexor.